The Great Quitting

[LTP56]

I've noticed that there is a lot of quitting in Agricola on BGA. I understand that it is a long game and is a big investment, but that makes the frequent quitting by chronic quitters even worse. I don't know if BGA knows this, but every time someone quits an Agricola game, it does the game's presence on BGA harm.

If people feel that they are going to be quit on every few games, they are likely to give up playing the game entirely because every few games, someone quits on them mid-game. I take my reputation and karma seriously, and I wouldn't dream of quitting a game I knowingly started without a legitimate reason. However, there are BGA users on this site that quit games quite regularly. If I were to wait for users with only good reputations for every game... I would be waiting for a longtime. So in a way, I'm being forced to play with people that are likely to quit the game before it is finished.

It would be nice if BGA could find a way to dissuade or deter these users from their anti-social behavior, specifically the chronic quitters. A timeout period, perhaps, like 24-hours from playing games you've recently quit might go a long way toward curbing the chronic quitters. Just a thought.

[timgriff]

I know it's always been a problem with real time games, but BGA never seem to respond to the requests to get much stronger with quitters.

I only play turned-based Agricola, and I've noticed it a lot more here as well now. It's so frustrating when you've been playing a gem for several weeks', and someone decides to quit and face almost zero consequences for doing so (often also tends to lead to me losing ELO as the quit happens in the last round, and BGA think that counts as a tie against weak players I am beating, so down falls the ELO).

[Ranior]

Yes, regrettably there is a quitting issue for these longer games, and it's really annoying, but BGA has shown no sign of caring about making a change on this despite repeated asks from various individuals.

Some great suggestions have been offered over the years. Some of my favorites include the following:
--Adjusting reputation penalties based on player count, game length, and how much of the game has progressed. It's one thing to quit a Can't Stop game against one other person after two minutes, but you've "wasted" just a few minutes of one players time, so you get a smaller reputation/karma penalty. Quitting an Agricola game that has been going for 90 minutes against 3 other opponents, well that should come with a very large reputation/karma penalty.
--Have game specific reputations. That way if you chronically quit Agricola games, you can't just get your reputation back easily by playing a bunch of quick games of Can't Stop to fix your reputation, you have to actually play Agricola games to completion to repair your reputation for Agricola.

I'd also like to see stricter options actually enabled in arena mode. As is, it's pretty easy to look up players reputation upon getting matched with them in arena, and realize it's fairly likely they're going to quit. If it's pretty obvious they're a high risk player to quit, why are they allowed in arena with such a low reputation and a chronic history of quitting? If you have a reputation system, why make the requirements so lax such that they barely filter players out and leave a bunch of bad actors still floating around?

[alexwjb]

I know it's always been a problem with real time games, but BGA never seem to respond to the requests to get much stronger with quitters.

I only play turned-based Agricola, and I've noticed it a lot more here as well now. It's so frustrating when you've been playing a gem for several weeks', and someone decides to quit and face almost zero consequences for doing so (often also tends to lead to me losing ELO as the quit happens in the last round, and BGA think that counts as a tie against weak players I am beating, so down falls the ELO).

I have no idea why they allow players to lose elo when an opponent quits, it’s so obviously unfair. The elo system should treat it as though the non-quitters did not play each other at all, but each of them individually beat the quitter.

[alexwjb]

Yes, regrettably there is a quitting issue for these longer games, and it's really annoying, but BGA has shown no sign of caring about making a change on this despite repeated asks from various individuals.

Some great suggestions have been offered over the years. Some of my favorites include the following:
--Adjusting reputation penalties based on player count, game length, and how much of the game has progressed. It's one thing to quit a Can't Stop game against one other person after two minutes, but you've "wasted" just a few minutes of one players time, so you get a smaller reputation/karma penalty. Quitting an Agricola game that has been going for 90 minutes against 3 other opponents, well that should come with a very large reputation/karma penalty.
--Have game specific reputations. That way if you chronically quit Agricola games, you can't just get your reputation back easily by playing a bunch of quick games of Can't Stop to fix your reputation, you have to actually play Agricola games to completion to repair your reputation for Agricola.

I'd also like to see stricter options actually enabled in arena mode. As is, it's pretty easy to look up players reputation upon getting matched with them in arena, and realize it's fairly likely they're going to quit. If it's pretty obvious they're a high risk player to quit, why are they allowed in arena with such a low reputation and a chronic history of quitting? If you have a reputation system, why make the requirements so lax such that they barely filter players out and leave a bunch of bad actors still floating around?

Completely agree with these. Game specific 95% karma needed to play Arena. Having a safe non-quitter space would be great.

[Calmon70]

I don't play agricola lately but I can't remember the last quit in any of my hundreds of games in the past months and years. Just go for arena and/or tournaments! I play them turn-based. The only reasons to not play arena is when the format is not really fun (often the 2 player variant) or when you are bellow 100 ELO. When arena is unfun for the game switch to tournaments only. That works as well (at least when enough time is given for the tournament)

[LTP56]

I have experienced 5 or 6 more quits in 4-player games of Agricola since my original post. It's really killing my desire to play this game on BGA, which is a shame because it's a classic board game worthy of a lifetime of play.

[Rassen]

As someone who is struggling to keep karma high enough to play arena, I'm so frustrated with the way this game is coded/designed.

Our of all my "quit", like 90% are unintended due to the following:

1. Top of the category: the game did not have a confirmation on starting, sometimes it can take forever to get a match, I can't just sit and stare at the matching screen for half an hour doing nothing, more often than not the game just started without my knowledge and I became a quitter during drafting phase. This happened so many times to me and to other people as well I believe, i don't even know why this problem is not handled considering the amount of update this game get.

2. Second but also happened quite often: no confirmation timeout, a few times happened to me and some others in my game, the game just get to the end harvest, i fed my people but forget that there is another animal organization confirmation at the end, stand up doing something else since I though the game ended and became a quitter. I don't even understand why it's a thing considering on normal action we have like 20 second timeout for normal action confirmation

3. Bug: this one is rare, happened only once, but extremely infuriating to me due to the way it's handled. Basically I am bugged out of my game, one that i am far in the lead and became a quitter. I sent bug report explaining along with game ID etc, all I want is to get that karma penalty out of my account, you know what happened after ? a big NOTHING. No one give a damn about my problem, zero reaching out, zero support. I became so frustrated that I canceled my premium subscription after that (my account is from 2015).

To be fair, I haven't encountered much genuine quitting in arena mode aside from the circumstance above, maybe one every 10-20 games, it's nothing to complain about. (Also the card update/balancing job was phenomenal, i don't even know why the problems above are not better addressed)

[LTP56]

Okay, let's establish a few facts here:

• Go through my recent game history of Agricola, see how many quits I have endured in the last month alone

• Agricola, especially with the full complement of players, 4-players, which is the player count I prefer, takes a considerable time investment

• Due to 4-players across the world needing to agree to first play, and then finish an entire game of Agricola out without quitting seems to be a big ask, at least as far as BGA is concerned

• With no incentive, or disincentives I should say, what is keeping BGA users from quitting games whenever they want? Going through users' profiles, you will see many BGA users with absolutely atrocious reputations. I.e., quitting games frequently or abandoning them outright. They still continue to play all the games they want, and abandon as many games as they like too - with no regard to other players whatsoever

• BGA is driving me away from playing Agricola here because it refuses to do something about the quitters and anti-social users on this website. I would play here everyday, and I have even contemplated becoming a premium member, but the one game that I love the most, Agricola... is being hobbled and hampered by BGA's reluctance to deal with its quitters problem

[Phoxtrot]

Somewhat relevant to this discussion, I have created a site discussion and suggestion about allowing the framework to give more flexibility to games to implement their own game specific behavior as to what happens when someone quits / is booted.

See the discussion here:
https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=36255

And the suggestion report here:
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=121841